Comparison of Fatigue Crack Growth Curves of Japan, the United States, and European Union Code and Standards

There are several codes, standards, handbooks, and guidelines for the nuclear power plant maintenance in Japan, the US, and EU. They include Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC) and fatigue crack growth curves for crack growth calculation. In this paper, the authors selected five kinds of codes, standards and guidelines, and compared their fatigue crack growth curves for choice of the suitable curves. The feature of each curve was quantitatively evaluated. Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME) maintenance rule and American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) code provide the fatigue crack growth formulae for both ferritic and austenitic steels and consider the environmental effects in some cases. The Fitness-for-Service Network (FITNET) curves are categorized in many kinds of metal, whereas the Forschungskuratorium Maschinenbau (Germany) = Board of Trustees of Mechanical Engineering (FKM) guideline and Welding Engineering Society (WES) procedure provide the common properties generally applicable to steels.